


black-heart city

by badacts



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Maybe a Small Amount of Comfort, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-11-23 06:13:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 10,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20887433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badacts/pseuds/badacts
Summary: Part of the job is getting hurt, over and over.Batfam fills for Whumptober 2019.





	1. shaky hands

**Author's Note:**

> Please check the notes for each chapter for warnings.
> 
> TW: PTSD, grief.

Red Robin is the composed one. Not the angry one, like Robin. The empathetic one - that’s Nightwing. And Red Hood, he’s the reckless one. Bat Girl is impossibly stubborn. Batman is silent and imposing, less a man than a threat. 

Red Robin is all flat affect and intellectualism. That’s, half the time, a shield. The other half it’s a chain around his neck like a collar, something he has to live with at the same time he lives up to it.

Red Robin doesn’t have any problems watching his family throw themselves into danger every day and night. He can stitch up wounds without flinching, takes orders without pridefulness and gives them with a strategic mind that he knows is admired. 

Red Robin is a symbol. A mask. A hero. Someone distinctly human and yet also somehow beyond that. 

Tim Drake is a man, just. Somewhere between a thousand years old and fifteen all over again at any given time, someone with everything and then nothing to lose. The loss; that’s cyclical. It’s his constant companion. There are always, always more reasons to mourn unless you figure out how to completely divorce yourself from other people, and if Bruce hasn’t figured that out yet then there’s no chance Tim will.

Tim. Red Robin. Grief is one of the things they have in common, the strongest forge between man and mask. Not surprising, when Red’s comrades are Tim’s family, and vice versa. But there’s a difference in compartmentalisation, where one only exists for a few hours every night, and the other has to live through the entire rest of their collective existence.

Neither Tim nor Red is afraid to die. 

But Red Robin’s hands never shake. Tim wishes he could say the same about his.


	2. explosion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: bombing, uncertain ending.

“I’m so _sick of this_,” Tim is snarling over the comm, which is fair, because it’s halfway through October and not nearly close enough to November for comfort, because they’re running on fumes and it’s not even Halloween yet.

Tonight, it’s bombs. Six of them, and Dick had joked that they had one each, except Red Hood had cut in with an offended implication that he was here, too. Bruce telling him that of course he was, and that Robin would be staying with Batman, had shut him up fast. It wasn’t in a bad way, at least. Well, the statement wasn’t followed by Jason disappearing in a hail of gunfire, so he can’t have reacted that badly.

Anyway, the bombs. They’re Joker-made, or the work of a dedicated copycat. Who knows, in this city. They have timers on them, all counting down in sync, but the bombs are all slightly different in construction. It’s nothing Dick hasn’t seen before, but he still pauses for a moment before disabling the blasting cap, just considering the effects of him screwing up.

He doesn’t screw up, though. He takes the cap apart, and then seperates it from the plastic explosive just in case. The timer flicks to 00.00 and then goes black.

“Done,” Dick says, sinking back on his heels. “Clear here.”

“We’re clear,” Damian reports.

“Clear,” Tim says.

“Clear,” Steph, Cass and Jason say almost as one.

“Oracle, alert the GCPD of an explosives pick up,” Batman is saying, which is precisely when Dick realises that the ticking - that obnoxious fake ticking that the Joker loves, even in the day and age of digital timers - hasn’t stopped.

It’s not the disassembled bomb in front of him. He stands up abruptly, all his relief gone, and listens hard until he starts to pinpoint the sound as coming from underneath him.

“Standby,” he says, which makes everyone on the open comm shut up and wait. Even the ones who usually get told off for chatting on the line are silent during a standby. 

The floor underneath him is wooden boards, a little shrunken with age. Shoving the remnants of the bomb aside, he uses the knife from his belt to pry up one of the boards and pull out the nails. The ones on either side come up easily enough afterwards. Like they’ve been removed before, and replaced just the same way.

“Fuck,” Dick says numbly. “There’s a second bomb in here. A minute on the clock.” The number on the digital face are a damning bright red. _Not enough time_.

“I’m on the way,” Jason replies instantly. This is his neck of the woods, after all.

“Maintain position,” Batman cuts in, too late for Hood but early enough to probably stop the others from bolting straight here.

Dick stares at the device, stomach somewhere around his ankles. This is nothing like the bomb he just disabled - this is a puzzle box of a creation, with at least two obvious traps that will trigger it instantly if he screws up. Also, the amount of explosive wired into it…

“Evacuate the building,” he says to Jason. “Evacuate the _block_.”

“Nightwing, report,” Batman demands.

“It’s a big bomb,” Dick says, “Not obvious ignition point. Lots of traps.”

“It could be radio-controlled,” Oracle supplies. 

“I think it’s,” Dick says, right as he cracks through the first trap and pulls one layer of explosives off of the bundle. Those go straight out the window and down fifteen floors. “Okay, wow. More triggers.”

He’s already lost ten seconds.

“Get out of there,” Batman snarls. “That’s an order.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” Dick says. There’s sweat stinging in his eyes. The clock reads 00.45 and his fingers are working even faster than he thought they could. He strips off another layer of the bomb, weakening it at least a little. 

“’Wing, just leave it,” Steph says. 

“Can’t,” Dick replies. “This is an apartment building.”

“Shut up and let him work!” Tim, ever the practical one, snaps.

**00.35**. 

“Got it,” Oracle says, and the fire alarms go off over Dick’s head. “That’ll get some moving, at least.”

Every extra layer removed is a lessening of the blast radius. The next trap in the series is different though, and he nearly blows himself sky-high before he realises it. Huffing, he shakes his head and doesn’t fuck it up.

“Five seconds out,” Jason says, breath coming hard. 

“Stay away,” Dick commands, recalculating the civilian death toll with each movement of his hands. 

“No can do,” Jason replies, because he’s an ass and because apparently dying in explosion once isn’t enough for him. “I’m here. Oh, for the love of - move it, people! _Move!_”

“They’re standing in the building’s evacuation area,” Oracle supplies. “Right in front of the lobby in the parking lot.” Right where they’ll get crushed by falling building materlals if Dick can’t stop this.

**00.15**

He’s not going to be able to stop this. 

**00.14**

The best he can do is take as little of the building with him as possible. Peeling away yet another layer and killing another blasting cap, he demands, “Where are you at with the evacuation?”

“They’re running,” Jason replies, with a hint of satisfaction. “More are coming out as we speak. You nearly done up there?”

Dick laughs a little, the sound wrenched out. “I wish.”

“Twelve seconds,” Tim says, quiet. Maybe to himself. Of course he’d be counting down.

Dick cuts himself with his wire cutters in his haste. It’s a stupid mistake, sending blood spattering over the device, but it doesn’t lose him anything he hadn’t already lost.

“Get out.” Jason sounds like Bruce when he’s really angry, or really afraid. Dick used to be jealous of that - his voice just doesn’t have the same growling quality. 

“I _can’t_,” Dick says. It’s true. It’s not a choice to make. If even a quarter of the people in this building are out by now he’d be shocked. And every piece of semtex he teases off this bomb is saving at least a couple of the people too slow to get out. Maybe not the people on the upper levels. But _people_.

**00.08**

Even back when he was a kid, he understood that part of the gig was putting his life on the line. And if this is an ignominious end to his career, then so be it. At least he’ll go out saving people, as intended.

“You guys should go,” Dick says, because he might be resigned to dying, but he’s not resigned to making his family listen to it happen.

“No,” Bruce replies. It’s a subtle shift, but it’s Bruce. And it’s a welcome change. If Dick’s going to die, he wants to do that with his dad beside him, not his boss.

**00.03**

“I’m sorry,” Dick says, because he is. Because his heart is breaking a little.

“Nightwing,” that’s Damian. “Nightwing, _no_!”

**00.02**

Dick doesn’t close his eyes.

**00.01**

**00.00**

There’s a click. And then, instead of fire, there’s a squeal like a party toy being blown by an enthusiastic preschooler, and a hidden compartment in the very centre of the device sprays glitter into the air.

Then, over his earpiece, there’s a cascade of cacophonous sounds. And Dick, with all his experience, knows exactly what an explosion sounds like over the comms. 

It’s not one explosion. It’s _five_.


	3. delirium

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: illness.

It’s too bright. Damian _hates_ it.

“Master Damian.” That voice is calm, and familiar as his own. “I must ask you to stay still.”

“I need to,” Damian tries, and then stops. It’s very hard to hold a thought in his head right now for long enough to verbalise it. “I need to go.” Where, he’s not quite sure. ‘Away’ is perhaps his best guess at this point. 

“You need to remain right here with me,” Alfred corrects. That’s who it is. Damian remembers now.

“I need-” He gives up. His head is aching fiercely, like twin ice picks behind his eyes.

“Please lie still and allow the medication to work,” Alfred replies, which is when Damian realises he’s toying with the IV in the crook of his arm. He’s not sure if he meant to remove it, though if he did he doesn’t think he was doing a good job of it. His fingers feel like they might at least partially belong to someone else. He stops them eventually.

“What happened,” he says. His voice sounds strange, turning the question into a slide downwards. 

“You’re not well,” Alfred supplies. “An infection. The antibiotics in your drip will help immensely.”

“Oh.” Damian doesn’t remember being sick. “Did I fall?”

“Of course not, Master Damian. Are you thirsty?”

“No,” Damian says vaguely. His throat burns, but it’s not thirst. It just is. Also his stomach is rolling. “Can I go?”

“Not yet.” That voice is different. Low, resonating in his bones. Unmistakeable. 

Damian sighs a little. “Father.”

“I’m here,” Father replies, fingers curling around Damian’s wrist. “What’s his status?”

“He is a stubborn little boy,” Alfred replies, though not unkindly. Damian makes a very quiet ‘_tt’_. “But he’ll be fine with rest, and a few more doses of antipyretics.” 

“Father,” Damian says, struck with a sudden urgency. Father is Batman is Father, but he’s not sure… “Are you - are you going?”

“I was going to patrol later, once you’re settled in bed,” Father replies. “Why?”

“I need to go.” The too-bright light fades in significance compared with this new thought: Father must not be allowed to go out by himself.

“Not tonight, Damian,” Father replies. “Weren’t you listening? You need rest.”

“You - you need me.” It’s vital Father understands this. Damian scrunches his forehead, wondering when he closed his eyes. It isn’t helping the pain in his head, still too hard even through his eyelids. He opens them and tries to look around - above him? - but his vision blurs too much. “You need me.”

“Not as much as you need to recover,” Father replies. “There are more patrols. More nights.”

“But,” Damian says, and now he’s wondering if the talking is hurting his head more, “You _need_ me.”

“Not tonight, Damian.”

That’s not right. He wishes the light would go so he can think. He needs to think. “Batman and Robin.”

“Once you’re better, son.”

“I’m Robin,” Damian says, his upper lip numb. He pushes at the IV site, thinking to remove it so that he can leave. He needs to. “You need me.”

The fingers around Damian’s wrist tighten, pulling it to his side. It’s - too much. He jerks against the hold, back arching, heels scraping against the table, and he _wails_ because moving _hurts_. 

“Master Bruce!”

Just like that, the pressure on his wrist is gone. Damian retreats back to stillness, but he’s trembling and hurting and he still can’t think. He whispers, “Father,” blinking rapidly at the ceiling until he thinks he’s going to go blind.

A big hand covers his eyes. The relief of the darkness is so stark that he sobs a breath in, the sound dragged from deep in his chest.

An arm curls over his chest, warm and weighty but not restraining. It presses into his chest, and when it rises he whoops in a breath as though forced to. Then there’s pressure again on his ribs, and he exhales. Then the cycle repeats. He thinks he’s crying but it doesn’t feel right. He can’t feel his cheeks.

“I need you,” he says, frantic. “I - I need you.”

“It’s okay,” Father replies. “I’m right here.” But he still doesn’t say he won’t _leave_.


	4. human shield

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: gun violence, hostage situation.

The grocery store at midnight is pleasant in a dreamy, sterile way - uniform, brightly coloured, the quiet only broken by someone’s top 40 playlist just loud enough to make out the words.

Dick, coasting along with one foot up on the back bar of the cart, is the one to break it when his phone goes off in his pocket. “Hello?”

“Grayson.” It’s his superior, Milan, terse as ever. It’s his day off, and he immediately jumps to _Arkham breakout_, and then, _someone’s dead. _Christ, he’s paranoid. “We need you to come to the West End mall. There’s a hostage situation, and the hostage-taker is asking for you.”

“I’ll be there,” Dick replies, abandoning his cart in the middle of the aisle without a thought. “Who is it?”

Of course, he’s already talking to the dial tone. It’s the impetus he needs to move fast, though.

* * *

It’s a usual set up - a cordon, cop cars and cops everywhere, worried or curious civilians hanging around outside along with some reporters that call to Dick as he jogs by. He waves a little to the familiar faces he sees, and then sees Milan standing at the back of a van.

“I’m here,” Dick says. “What’s happening?”

There’s a police negotiator Dick vaguely recognises sitting in the van, and he gives Dick an impatient look. “What’s happening is that this guy won’t let us do our job because he wants to talk to you.” Clearly not a fan, then.

“Isn’t your job to try give the guy what he wants?” Dick asks, hopping up into the van. There’s a computer screen with the mall CCTV pulled up on it, showing a couple of guys with rifles loitering in the main part of the mall.

“We’re just about to get footage of the hostages,” Milan says. She’s a slight, no-nonsense black woman who Dick would propose to in an instant if she weren’t definitely batting for a team that firmly doesn’t include him. “Thankfully they’ve holed up in a shop with an external wall, because we can get access via the vents for a look.”

“Great,” Dick says. “Any idea who the guy is?”

“Marcus O’Reilly,” Milan supplies, and hands him a slim brown file. “Just got out of Blackgate after serving his time for armed robbery and drugs charges.”

“Doesn’t sound familiar,” Dick says, flipping the file open. A sullen face with a shaved head stares back. The guy doesn’t look familiar, either.

“You arrested him,” Milan supplies. “Warehouse bust, eighteen months ago.”

Dick thinks back. “I arrested fifteen people that evening.”

“Well, this one seems to have found the experience pretty memorable,” Milan says drily. “Usually I would assume he’s holding a grudge, but, knowing you, you probably gave him a particularly memorable pep talk that he’s hoping to hear one more time before he goes back to prison.”

“It’s nice to be appreciated,” Dick says, and then gestures to the negotiator’s setup. “Do you mind?”

The negotiator sighs but gives his seat up for Dick, hopping down from the van. Dick hopes he sticks close - this isn’t exactly Dick’s general wheelhouse, for all the practice he’s had at talking people down.

“We’re getting a sniper up on the roof,” Milan says matter-of-factly before he picks up the phone. “He’s not going to have a great shot, though.”

That’s true enough. The interior storefronts are all glass, as is a large portion of the western wall, but the eastern one, where the hostages are, is concrete. Whoever is up there will be able to see okay through the shop displays and window signage, but it’s a fair distance from one side to the other.

Dick picks up the stupid bright red negotiator phone and dials the number scrawled across the paper in front of the computer. It rings a few times before it clicks live.

“Hi,” Dick says, when O’Reilly doesn’t speak. “This is Detective Grayson.”

“S’up,” comes the reply. Despite the name, the guy sounds as Gotham as they come, and not all that old. Dick flicks his eyes back to the file and translates the birthdate to someone younger than him. “I wanna talk to you, man.”

“We’re talking right now, Marcus,” Dick says, leaning back in the chair. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Face to face,” O’Reilly corrects. “Come down here.”

“Are your friends going to let me in?” Dick asks.

“They will if I tell them to.”

Dick squints at the computer thoughtfully. “We need to talk about the hostages first, Marcus.”

“What about ‘em?” O’Reilly asks.

“If I’m going to come down there, I need a bit of a goodwill gesture. What about letting some of the hostages go free?” That’s his goal here. Get the innocents out. Everything else is just icing.

O’Reilly laughs. “Get real, _Detective_. You come down here, or I start killing ‘em one by one.” Then he hangs up.

“Nice guy,” Dick says, putting the phone down. “How far off are we on the camera?”

“Five seconds,” Milan says, and then, “There we go.”

On the screen, a new window pops up of slightly clearer footage. The hostage-takers - three of them, all visibly armed - are facing away from the wall, and so away from the camera, just inside the wide-view lens’ reach. The hostages are all sitting on the floor, lined up against the storefront. The shop stock has been shoved to the side to clear the space. It looks like a homeware store - the shopfront is stocked with blankets and pillows and vases.

Dick figures the centremost figure has got to be Marcus. He’s got one of the hostages on his knees, closer than the others, and in easy reach of both his hands and the handgun he’s holding. The hostage is turned towards the camera, their face just visible behind Marcus’s hip.

“Fuck,” Dick says, dumbstruck and loud enough to surprise even himself.

“What?” Milan demands sharply.

“That’s my brother,” Dick says.

* * *

He can see it, in his mind’s eye. Tim in the wrong place, at the wrong time, knowing that there’s shit-all he can do as Tim Drake-Wayne and not much more he can do to get out of the situation and be not-Tim-Drake-Wayne when there are five guns versus him and a bunch of civilians.

Tim wouldn’t sit and let the others get threatened. He’d volunteer himself as the most valuable hostage, tell them his whole life story to make sure they knew the precise monetary value of his continued being alive. 

Or, worse, he’d talk until he got their attention and was singled out that way, neglecting to mention at all that he was a rich man’s rich son. Going by the bruise blooming over his jaw, Dick is going to take door number two this time.

Milan had said some things about conflict of interest and safety and ‘not getting yourself killed’, but they both know the only option was for him to go. He straps on a bulletproof vest over the thin WE body armour he always wears at work. Hopefully none of the grocery store security cameras had been pointing at his car while he changed earlier, or some rent-a-cop must have gotten an eyeful. 

He debates, and then straps on his piece as well as the electrified escrima that looks just like a standard-issue folding baton. It’s not going to save him or anyone else against five guys with high-powered weapons, but it’s better than nothing.

He gets a SWAT escort to the front doors. At least they, unlike the uniform GCPD guys, don’t look at him like he’s a bomb about to go off. The captain - Jenkins, Dick thinks - waves him off with a cheery, “See you soon,” not entirely belied by the way he’d assured Dick and Milan both they’d come in as fast as possible, guns blazing, when necessary.

“See you,” Dick says, and ventures forward alone. The mall is a mess from where people fled earlier - it’s one of those late-night places, where the cinema and restaurants stay open until midnight or so. It’s a Saturday, and even in Gotham there would have been some crowds.

He winds his way through to the shop and slips past the men guarding the door - not in full body armour, he notes, but their faces are covered with balaclavas - without a word. 

“Hey,” he says to announce his presence. One of the hostages, very quietly, sobs. He looks around quickly, checking for injuries, and doesn’t find anything serious. He saves Tim for last, meeting his eyes quick and away before looking to O’Reilly. “I’m here. In the flesh.”

“In position,” Smith, the sniper, says over the comms.

“Visibility is poor,” Oracle says in his other ear. “It’s starting to rain. He’s not going to be able to see shit.”

“Detective Grayson, everybody,” O’Reilly says, tone mock-warm. He’s the only one not wearing a mask. He’s pulled Tim up as a proper human shield, and they’re almost of a height. The half-inch he has on Tim is going to make shooting him from the rooftop across the street almost impossible in these conditions.

“You’ve got me,” Dick says calmly. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I lied,” O’Reilly says. “I don’t really want to talk. I just want to kill you.”

“Okay,” Dick replies. “Well, I’m here now. Why don’t you let the hostages go?”

O’Reilly moves too fast. The gun goes off, and for a moment Dick expects pain. Then, from behind him, someone screams.

He’s shot one of the hostages. Belly wound, bleeding badly. Marcus says, cold, “I’m not here to make bargains.”

“You’ve got something against shoppers?” Dick asks. He’s still calm. So far.

“To be honest, I just don’t care.” He smiles like someone who should have been in Arkham, not Blackgate.

“Let them go,” Dick says. 

O’Reilly tilts his head. Then he grins. “You know what? Fine. All of you at the front? Go. And take that guy with you.”

The hostages don’t move, staring wide-eyed between him and the other hostage-takers and Dick. The one with the gut wound is panting and clutching at his stomach, rapidly going grey.

O’Reilly shouts, “Go!” Then he fires a bullet into the ceiling.

One of the fluorescent lights overhead shatters in a spray of plastic. The hostages, though - they run, two of them barely pausing to hoist the injured one between them. Then it’s just the five guys with guns, Tim, Dick, and a puddle of blood.

“Are you going to let that one go, too?” Dick asks.

“Not a chance,” O’Reilly replies. He’s got an arm slung around Tim’s neck.

“He’s a kid,” Dick says, steadily. He doesn’t think that, really, or at least not most of the time. But in jeans, sneakers and an oversized hoodie, Tim looks _young_.

In his ear, the SWAT team are reporting on the condition of the hostages as they’re whisked to safety. Dick blocks it out.

“You think I don’t watch the news? That I can’t go to a library?” O’Reilly says. He’s smiling, small and mean. “I’m not an idiot. I know exactly who this guy is.” And he jams the muzzle of his gun hard against the side of Tim’s head. “This is your little brother.”

Tim doesn’t flinch. He says, “Adopted brother.”

There’s a cold silence, and then O’Reilly moves the gun from Tim’s skull - quick death - to somewhere down near his kidneys. “Alright, smart guy.”

Dick gives Tim a look that says, _shut up_. Tim, being smarter than their other siblings, does so.

“Me ‘n’ my brother, we were both at the warehouse that night. Got arrested and thrown in Blackgate, matching sentences,” O’Reilly says.

“Bet your mom’s really proud,” Dick says before he can stop himself. 

O’Reilly ignores him. “Billy had debts, though. And I couldn’t protect him, in there, not like I could out here. And guess how that ended up for him?”

“William O’Reilly’s dead,” Babs fills in flatly, at the same time O’Reilly bellows, “He’s dead! And it’s your fault!”

Dick had already seen where this was going, but he’s not exactly keen on the confirmation. “I didn’t make you rob people at gunpoint, Marcus.”

“He’d be alive, if it weren’t for you,” O’Reilly snarls. “But guess what? Here you are, and here’s your brother. So I think it’s my turn to make good tonight.”

“What about your friends?” Dick asks. “What do they want out of this, exactly? Because I don’t think I’ve done anything to them.”

“These guys?” O’Reilly asks, suddenly amused again. “I made some friends in high places when I got out. Show ‘im, boys.”

As one, the figures on either side of O’Reilly pull their balaclavas off. And underneath, they’re wearing masks that are slitted eyes and the curve of a beak. Owls.

Talons.

“Shit,” Babs mutters, and then, “Hurry it up, Black Bat!”

“Smith,” Milan is saying over the comms, “Do you have a shot?”

“Maybe,” Smith says. He sounds laconic, but snipers almost always do when they’re working. “Not a great one.”

So they’ve got back-up incoming. But by the look on O’Reilly’s face, they don’t have long.

“They don’t want anything,” O’Reilly says, “But, if you ask me? I think they’re probably just as happy as I am to see you both bleedin’ out on the floor.”

“Smith,” someone prompts.

“I don’t have the shot,” Smith says, “I repeat, I do not - ulp!” Then there’s nothing but silence.

“Get eyes on Smith,” Milan demands to someone else. “_Now._”

Dick, aware they might have another Talon in play, aware he might be about to get shot in the back, says, “So, what’re you waiting for, exactly?”

“I’m not waiting,” O’Reilly says, “I’m just savouring.” And he raises his gun back to Tim’s head.

Tim, who’s looking at Dick with a placid facial expression, his eyes asking, _what now? _Because they’re not Nightwing and Red Robin. They’re Dick and Tim, and what they can do is limited by the clothes they’re wearing, and by the eyes watching them.

It doesn’t matter, anyway, not really. Neither of them is faster than a bullet. 

The gun goes off. Dick doesn’t close his eyes.

He’s expecting blood, and he gets it. What he’s not expecting is two more gunshots straight afterward.

The owl masks shatter. And O’Reilly, missing the top of his skull, drops to the ground and just barely doesn’t drag an in-one-piece-Tim with him.

“Don’t ever say I don’t do anything for you, Timmy,” a rough, half-robotic, _familiar_ voice says over their comms, there and then gone. 

Jason.

“It’s a mask!” someone is yelling over the comms, but Dick’s already flying forward and catching Tim up in his arms, pushing him towards the wall and covering him with his body.

“What the hell were you doing here?” he demands, pulling Tim’s head against his shoulder, a show of sibling comfort that abruptly becomes real when he realises Tim is shivering. 

“Christmas shopping,” Tim mumbles into his chest, and Dick, despite himself, laughs.


	5. gunpoint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: sensory loss, deafness, blindness.

Steph doesn’t know Jason Todd that well, but she knows he tried to kill a whole bunch of people she cares about a lot.

So, when Babs rattles off an address and asks her, specifically, to go check on him, she thinks it’s justified that she says, “What?”

“Are we having connection issues?” Babs asks, extremely dry.

“No, of course - I’m just,” Steph says, and then, “You know what? Never mind.” 

She shoots a grapple across to the next building, letting her body turn into a lean, aerodynamic shape aimed for the roof. She hits it gently and rolls with it, the light armour on her back absorbing the shock. “How old is he, again?”

“Twenty-four,” Babs supplies.

“So he needs to be babysat why exactly?”

“It’s not babysitting. I haven’t heard from him when I thought I was going to, and you’re closest so you got the short straw.”

“I didn’t realise you two were tight,” Steph muses. It stings, a little. She would never profess to knowing everything about Babs, but she thinks ‘I’m buddies with a murderer’ should have probably come up before now.

“He’s…family,” Babs says, and then sighs. “Also, Dick asked me to.”

“And you’d do _anything_ for the Boy Wonder,” Steph says, and then makes kissy noises in the comm until Babs informs her she’ll mute Steph if she doesn’t shut up.

She’s not that far from Jason’s place, and it takes her hardly any time to cover the four blocks or so to his building. It’s a squat five-story building with a terrible yellowing render slathered on the outside, a bit like a moldering wedding cake.

Her grapple catches on the roofline, and she swings onto windowsill, noting where someone - probably Jason - has removed the anti-bird spikes all the other windows have. The sill is just wide enough for her to balance on if she crouches on the balls of her feet, her knee to the window and her grapple still connected above.

“I’m here,” she tells Babs, knocking lightly at the window pane.

She waits for a moment, and then knocks again. “You sure he’s here?”

“I’m sure,” Babs replies. She sounds confident, and underneath that, quietly concerned. ‘Dick asked me to’, Steph’s _ass_.

Steph produces a slim metal rod from her belt, and levers the window open, flipping off the trap as she does so. It glides up easily and silently, admitting her inside.

It’s dark and quiet, just the city lights and the orange refraction from the clouds overhead to see by. She’s in a tiny galley kitchen, aged by tidy.

“He has a dishwasher,” Steph mutters. “No fair.” Babs huffs a chuckle in her ear.

She creeps out into the living room, and edges into the bedroom, not entirely sure what she’s going to find. It’s empty, though the bed is unmade. She touches a finger to it and finds it cool.

She’s aiming for the bathroom when a hand reaches from under the bed and grabs her ankle.

She’s not ashamed to admit that she screams as she falls, high and cut off when she hits the wooden floor. Still, despite the surprise, she’s fast to roll the body - bigger than her, _heavy_ \- of her assailant out from under the bed, over top of her, and then onto their own back with her knee in their gut and their right hand pinned over their head.

Then there’s the kiss of cold metal against her throat. A gun. She falls still but doesn’t let up, internally cursing as she looks down.

There’s just enough light to make out the pale eyes and white fringe of her would-be horror movie villain. It’s Jason. She says, “For fuck’s sake, Todd!”

She’s expecting a wisecrack, and then the gun moving away from her neck. She gets nothing at all. “Jason?” 

Still nothing. Jason’s obviously conscious, panting hard enough his breathing shifts Steph’s weight on top of him, but he doesn’t speak, and doesn’t speak, and doesn’t even seem to make…eye contact…

Babs demands, “What the hell is going on over there?”

“He attacked me,” Steph says, “But there’s something wrong.”

She’s no world’s greatest detective, but she’s better than your average bear at putting two and two together. She extends one finger from where her hand is held hard around Jason’s wrist, and taps against Jason’s palm.

… - . .–. …. Once, and then again.

“Steph?” Jason asks after the second repetition, voice small. She sketches a tick into his palm.

His breath shudders out of him, and the gun falls away from her at last. He goes entirely slack underneath her, and for a moment she thinks he’s fainted until he lets out something that sounds far too much like a sob.

She doesn’t know him that well, but she would comfort a complete stranger who sounded like that. Pushing her fingers into his hair, she says, “He can’t hear or see.”

“_Fuck_,” Babs says. “I’ll send the car.”

“And someone to help me get him to it.” Steph is strong, but Jason has to weigh two-twenty, two-thirty. 

“B will come,” Babs replies, all surety. “Stand by.”

“Got it,” Steph says. She pushes herself off of Jason, letting go of his wrist, and is surprised again when he jerks and grabs her. This time, though, once he’s got her, he just holds.

“Don’t go,” he says, too loud and quick and flat.

“I won’t,” she says, and then remembers he can’t hear so taps it into his bare forearm instead. _I’ll stay. Help coming._

“Don’t go,” he says again, fingers spasming a little. He sounds panicked. Afraid. She doesn’t like it.

Letting him keep his grip, she maneuvers herself to his head and then gently deposits his head in her lap on top of the folds of her cape. When she starts running her fingers lightly through his hair with her free hand, his fingers relax again. He doesn’t let go, though.

Together, they wait.


	6. dragged away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: trauma, injury of a parent.

Damian has not been permitted to patrol tonight, so he has decided to train in the Cave instead while Pennyworth runs communications.

Richard had taken one look at him earlier and said, smiling, “Cheer up, sulk-face. You’ll be back out in no time.” Damian would never admit it, but it was helpful to hear. He would also die before admitting he was sulking.

It’s just a wrist sprain. It hurts, but it’s nothing serious. Father’s insistence that he rests it is irritating, especially when it’s 2AM and he’s restless after hours and hours of inactivity.

So, he’s boxing at the punching bag with his good arm, and every time his sprained one so much as twitches in the direction of the bag, he gets a warning, “Master Damian,” from behind him. Pennyworth isn’t even watching him, as far as Damian can tell - he just knows.

“Too many years of knowing your father,” Pennyworth says, unprompted. “The two of you are very alike.”

“Thank you,” Damian says, a little snidely, and hits the bag again. He’s worked up a light sweat between that and the careful footwork, hopefully enough to let him sleep by the time the others get back.

It seems like a normal night in Gotham, as far as Damian can tell. Pennyworth sounds calm as he talks to Nightwing and Batman, and then Spoiler and Red Robin. There’s some kind of bust happening tonight, but Damian hasn’t been allowed to know the details. It’s irritating.

Tired of the bag, he picks up a tennis ball someone must have left down here for Titus, and heads to the far end of the cave to bounce it off the wall. If he gets really bored, he resolves to use the T-Rex as target practice.

It’s vaguely therapeutic, the fuzzy green ball and how it fits in his hand, and how he can bounce it off precisely the same places over and over again. He sinks into it, thinking half-heartedly of his schoolwork for the coming week. He has a history essay on a topic of his choice to do - he’s considering the earliest member of the Japanese Imperial House, Emperor Jimmu - and a report on The Book Thief. He resolves to ask Jason for suggestions on the latter, seeing as he definitely -

Damian can’t explain how he knows something has suddenly changed, but he does - a pall settles across his shoulders, and he turns to Pennyworth at the computer with all the hair standing up on the back of his neck. The tennis ball rolls past him across the floor.

“I’ll prepare the medbay,” Pennyworth is saying, before abandoning his post with more speed than Damian has ever seen him show before.

“Alfred?” Damian asks. “What is it?” 

There’s no immediate reply. After a moment, without looking up, Pennyworth says, “Come help me, Damian.”

They prepare in silence. Damian tries to follow what is being procured for clues as to what has happened, but he doesn’t know enough to extrapolate. He’s never wished so strongly that Mother focussed less time on his ability to kill people and more time on him healing them.

He doesn’t ask who it is, but he doesn’t have to wait long: it’s only been ten minutes when the proximity alarm for the gate goes off, followed moments later by the thrumming roar of the Batmobile’s engine being pushed towards its ground-bound limits. It screeches to a halt in the cave, the door popping open before the engine even dies.

Richard emerges first, which sends a shiver of something like surprise over Damian - he could have sworn…

His question is answered when Richard reaches in to assist Father out, with the Red Hood pushing him from the inside.

The suit is shredded. The material of it, black though it is, looks slick. The skin underneath is red with lifeblood. Richard and Jason are covered in it, too. The both of them are pale, but Batman is grey.

“Father?” Damian asks. Even as he says it, his own ears hear how young he sounds.

Father, his cowl off, just groans, eyelids flickering but not opening.

Damian has seen so much blood in his short life. It makes no sense how the ground beneath his feet suddenly feels terribly, terrifyingly unstable. “Father!”

There’s no answer, nothing. Damian is forced to trail behind as Richard and Jason half-carry Father to the medbay and then lift him onto the gurney.

“What happened?” Damian asks as Jason takes a pair of shears from Pennyworth and cuts the remainders of the suit away. “Richard, what _happened_?”

“Move, Robin,” Richard says, and that’s his Batman voice, the one Damian can’t help but obey. Richard is taking a surgical cloth and covering the too-deep gleaming gash on Father’s abdomen before leaning an elbow into it to slow the bleeding.

There’s engine noise at the door, and Red Robin’s bike squeals to a stop inside the cave. Damian ignores it in favour of listening to Jason’s rapid low voice saying, “Definite organ injuries, probable arterial compromise - anything from Leslie?”

“She’s on her way,” Pennyworth replies. “She recommends we do what we can.” He’s inserting an IV shunt, hands steady as ever. Jason hangs a bag of saline and a bag of blood ready to go.

Damian is having an out-of-body experience, he thinks. This isn’t right. This is all wrong, and he’s standing here, still, while the others move too fast for him to keep track of, doing things he doesn’t understand, and he abruptly becomes aware of his own voice saying, “Father? What happened?”

Still, no one answers.

“Tim,” Jason says, “Get him out of here. _Now_.”

And before Damian can protest, a hard skinny arm wraps around his chest. They’re already in the elevator before Damian’s body responds to his mind’s frantic, _no! No!_

He fights, mean and unsophisticated. not caring that it hurts him as much as Tim, maybe more. He just wants to get back to Father, and then, failing that, he just wants to get _away_.

Tim is like an octopus, though. This close, Damian can’t do any real damage, and he ends up half-twisted into Tim’s chest, his own arm caught behind his back in a strong grip that hurts his bad wrist and tests his shoulder. He can’t get free, not that it stops him struggling.

“It’s okay,” Tim is saying, jarred by Damian’s movements but unrelenting. “Damian, it’s okay. Just breathe.”

He can’t remember the last time he breathed. His brain, demanding oxygen, gasps it in and then releases it in a tearing, sobbing exhale. His brain whites out. He leans his forehead into Tim’s collarbone and _keens_.


	7. waterlogged

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: idk, potential drowning? This is kinda a funny one.

There’s nothing more unpleasant than patrol in the rain. 

It’s dangerous - everything is slippery, from their gloves to the concrete and tile rooflines that serve as their highway. Visibility is terrible. No matter how waterproof their costumes are, everything leaks at least a little bit with enough rain. And cold bodies and cold brains are twice as likely to make a mistake in a fight.

Tim, perched in the lee of probably the ugliest concrete window surround in Gotham, curls his cape around him and sniffs sullenly. He’s overlooking the pitch-dark waters of Gotham harbour and the docks, and he’s miserable about it.

There’s nothing happening down on ground level. Even the people being paid to work are shuffling back and forth in wet-weather gear, hunched and well inside the spotlit areas. However, there were reports of a smuggling handover taking place here tonight, so here he is.

He’s not sure what. Best case scenario is drugs or stolen goods. Weapons aren’t too bad, except the people guarding them tend to be better armed than your average thug. The worst is always human trafficking: Tim has cracked open enough shipping containers full of dehydrated, hungry, frightened people without adding another tonight.

Of course, just as he’s debating that, there’s a small commotion in the shadows near one of the dark warehouses. Tim turns his attention to it, flicking over the array in his lenses to thermals as he does. It shows him three figures, the middle-most of which seems to be being frogmarched towards the water. They look unconscious, or at least restrained.

He’s already moving when light catches off the smooth dome of a familiar helmet.

Chances that the smuggling tonight involved human trafficking have gone up, if Red Hood is involved.

Tim swings across to the next roof, bolts over it, and then hurls himself down towards the water to land on one of the wharves. The two men have hauled their burden halfway along, and are debating in muttered voices with no idea that he’s coming up fast behind them.

“Here’s fine,” one of them hisses.

“’S not deep enough,” the other replies. “This is _Red Hood_. You wanna half-ass it?”

“Stop,” Tim says in his Red Robin voice, and they freeze. “Let him go.”

Unfortunately, at least one of them isn’t as stupid as they look, trying to get rid of a Gotham vigilante by tossing him in what can’t be more than twenty feet of water. He takes one look at Tim, and then, in one mighty heave, shoves Jason away from himself and into the water.

Then both of them turn on him, draw guns, and start firing.

Tim would like to hurl the both of them into the harbour after Jason, weapons and all. However, he has priorities, and the top of that list is not dealing with Bruce if he lets Jason drown. He leaps off of the wharf, puncturing the water in a smooth dive amidst a veritable hail of bullets.

Underneath, everything is muffled, even the gunshots. It’s dark and he’s loathe to give away his position by turning a light on, so he relies on feel rather than sight as he swims forwards. Jason is mostly muscle, so it’s not surprising Tim’s fingers hit leather closer to the harbour floor than to the surface.

Winding an arm around Jason’s chest, Tim pushes for the surface with his legs and remaining arm. For a moment, underwater, it feels easy - it’s only when he breaks the surface underneath the wharf that he realises that he’s possibly in trouble.

He’s a strong swimmer, of course. However, the water is choppy with the wind, and it’s hard to keep Jason’s head above the surface as well as his own. He curses until he realises it’s letting too much dank water into his mouth - oh god, he’s going to mutate into Killer Croc’s skinnier brother.

He has a rebreather in his belt, but if he grabs for it the choice is to let go of Jason or stop swimming, and neither of those is great options. Also, there’s still the odd bullet hitting the water, because apparently these idiots being terrible shots isn’t a good reason for their boss to not give them plenty of ammunition to not hit things with.

Just as Tim’s contemplating his poor life choices, Jason jerks in his very professional life-saving hold and regains consciousness fighting.

They both go under immediately. Tim pushes Jason away from him in the black murk, and barely catches sight of the silvery flash of a knife before it hits him. 

He surfaces, Jason doing the same just outside of arm’s reach. Tim sputters, “Fuck! It’s me!”

“Red?” Jason asks, shaking his still-masked head. The thing has got to be at least a quarter full of water, but he doesn’t seem bothered by it.

“Yeah. You know, your brother?” Tim says. Jason is swimming pretty well for someone who is either drugged or concussed, but Tim is keeping a close eye on him even so. If he has to go under for a third time tonight, he’s staying down there. By _choice_.

“I know who you are,” Jason mutters.

“Jason,” Tim says, “You _stabbed_ me.”

“Fuck. Did I?” 

“You didn’t get through my armour,” Tim admits, “But still.”

“Thank god,” Jason says, with a degree of relief that doesn’t make sense until he continues, “Imagine what you’d turn into if you got this water in your bloodstream.”

“I hate you,” Tim mumbles. There’s yet another gunshot above them, this one fired _through_ the wharf and into the water less than six feet from Tim. “Shit!”

“Fecking hell,” Jason says. “C’mon, baby bird. Start swimming. We’ve got a creepy human auction to stop.”


	8. field medicine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A prequel to 'dragged away' (chapter six).
> 
> TW: blood, serious injury.

It’s a quiet night when it happens. Then again, it’s always a quiet night until everything starts going wrong.

Dick is coming down from a short chase of some would-be jewelry store robbers that ended with them trussed up for the GCPD, swinging easy between buildings along the familiar tracks of his old patrol. Bludhaven is his territory now, but it’s nice to be home.

“Nightwing,” Oracle says in his ear then, “Red Hood just activated his distress beacon.”

And Dick is abruptly back in the Cave a year and a half ago, with all of the others including the reluctant Hood, who he’d bribed to come with the joint promises of intel and that no one would yell at him. Dick had kept that promise on both counts - it had been a relaxed discussion of the state of the city, with no acknowledgments of any lingering issues.

Then, right at the end, Bruce had tossed something to Jason, who’d snatched it out of air.

“It’s the latest emergency beacon,” Bruce had said, and Dick hadn’t had any idea whether his flat expression was masking something, or anything at all.

Jason had looked down at the device in his hand, and then up into Bruce’s eyes. “Just put a collar on me. At least it would be honest.”

Bruce, seemingly unbothered, had replied, “Use it or don’t. But at least keep it on you.”

And all of them had known Jason would probably die before using it to ask for help. After all, he already had once.

Jason had snorted, though, and tucked the disc into his belt. And, as far as Dick knew, had carried it with him ever since.

“Tell me the coordinates,” Dick says to Oracle, and takes off in that direction.

“I can’t raise B,” she tells him. “His tracker is…” There’s some clicking in the background. “…in the same location as Hood?”

“Send the car,” Dick says, keeping the replies short to conserve his breath. He’s pushing his body faster than he did earlier tonight during the chase, doubling that speed and then pushing past that too. 

“Nightwing,” Red Robin’s voice sounds over the lines. “Spoiler and I are closing in on their location. Let us know if you need support.”

“Sure,” Dick says, and that’s it.

It takes less than five minutes for him to reach the location at his pace. Rather than entering at ground level, he grapples across to one of the high windows at the top of the facade.

The building is quiet in that breathless way that tells Dick it wasn’t quiet until recently. That’s something he’s used to, with Hood. He has a way of leaving that kind of silence behind him. 

Rather than wait, Dick puts his boot through the window, and then knocks the razor-sharp glass fragments out with his gloved knuckles to clear himself a path. Then he uses his grapple to swing down to the floor two stories below.

He’s more-than-half-expecting to find the two of them in the middle of the building screaming at each other, surrounded by some bodies with bullet holes in them.

He’s wrong. He’s so, so wrong.

Not about the bodies - they’re sprawled haphazardly across the room. Whether they’re living or dead, Dick can’t tell from here. But neither Red Hood or Batman are on their feet. Bruce is flat on his back on the concrete floor, and Jason is leaning over him, red to his elbows with gore.

Dick’s first thought is that this amount of blood is going to be a bitch to clean up before the cops arrive. His second thought is just wordless white-noise panic.

“Jay,” he says, breaking every rule they have about combining real names and costumes and not even caring.

Jason looks up at him, white-faced and afraid. He says, “_Help me_.”


	9. shackled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: torture, brain-worm music.

_…dirty babe, you see these shackles, baby, i’m your slave…_

“Shut up.” 

“Sorry,” Dick says through a mouthful of blood that would have made it impossible to keep whistling anyway, “I just cannot get that song out of my _head_.”

“Shut _up_.” He gets hit harder this time. The force of it makes him swing, and the swinging sends screaming pain through both of his shoulders.

He shuts up, or blacks out, just for a moment. It’s getting pretty hard to tell at this point whether it’s a choice or not. 

“You don’t like pop music?” He asks an unspecified amount of time later. He’s slurring a little bit. “What’s your genre? Rock? Metal?”

“He’s not much for music, I don’t think.” That’s a different voice, slicker. Gently cajoling, like a preschool teacher. “That’s not what we’re here to talk about though.

“You came…to the right person,” Dick says. At this point, his hands are too swollen to move above his head, the shackles pounding tight around his wrists. If he’s lucky, he’ll end up without needing an amputation, but luck isn’t going his way so far tonight. “I love to talk.”

“I noticed.” Owner of the voice, who is wearing a dark suit, says, stepping into the light. “How did you know about my shipment?”

Dick squints. “Who’re you?”

A hand darts out and squeezes his throat, once, hard, before slacking again. He sputters. The Suit snarls, “You know who I am.”

“You guys,” Dick gasps, “You guys, you all look th’ same.”

The hand tightens, less this time but a threat. “Who leaked information about my shipment?”

“Ungh,” Dick says, blood frothing on his bottom lip and rolling down his chin. If Suit isn’t careful, he’s going to get puked on. “Dunno…what you’re talking about.”

“I thought you’d say that,” Suit says, and removes his hand from Dick’s neck. It’s not comforting at all. Suit reaches across to the table and lifts a cattle prod.

Dick screams when it touches the bare skin under his collarbones. The sound rips out of him, just barely audible amidst the din of his brain. Whoever made that prod should be in jail for either illegal mods of a weapon or animal abuse.

“Remember yet?” Suit asks, once Dick is slumped in his chains and heaving.

Dick shakes his head. The prod comes down again. _This time,_ he pukes. And then he doesn’t even get to catch his breath before the third shock races through him.

He swears his heart does something wrong in his chest, with the third shock.

“Remember. Yet?” Suit asks, leaning into the words this time.

“Okay!” Dick pants. “Okay, fine. I’ll tell you.”

Suit smiles. “I’m so pleased to hear it.”

He stares expectantly at Dick for a long moment. Dick still panting, waits.

After a minute, Suit’s smile falls off. “If you’re wasting my time-”

“I’m telling you,” Dick says. He’s got his eyes closed, slumped again. 

“You’re not tell…”

Dick’s head flops back. He thinks he blacks out again for a moment, because the next thing he knows there’s a hand wrenched tight in his hair holding his head up.

“Tell me,” Suit is snarling in his ear, and then he shakes Dick for good measure. In his free hand, he’s still holding the baton, which sizzles very faintly in the air.

“Okay,” Dick says again, gasping like a fish. He heaves in a better breath, sighs it out, and looks up to meet Suit’s impatient gaze.

“_I’m bringing sexy back_,” he sings, loud and flat and aggressive right in Suit’s face, and he’s still laughing when the electricity arcs through him again.


	10. unconscious

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: child loss, grief.

Part of being Batman is the reliance on muscle memory. Those unconscious ticks, trained into his body with hours of work, save lives. His, and plenty of other people’s too.

Not everyone. But then, that’s always been the case.

His mind’s no traitor, but it still feels like a dirty trick when his brain betrays him, on the odd occasion that it does. That the patterns of his existence can trip him up and make him say the name of a dead boy, or look to his side expecting a flash of colour and find nothing at all, or catch his breath at the name on a gravestone where it shouldn’t be at all and remember and want to forget -

\- it _hurts, _deep and sick and terminal. 

Bruce Wayne knows from pain.

That his kids have come back, that he just thought them dead when they were alive, or that they crawled out of the grave due to a trick of fate, it barely matters. The pain is grief is an illness is incurable, he thinks too much of the time. Their return doesn’t erase it, not when they lived it and he did too. And them being back doesn’t stop him making mistakes: he calls Red Hood _Jay-lad_, calls Nightwing _Robin, _doesn’t call Tim or Cass at all, treats Damian less like a son than an ally (thrice burned, once shy). It’s stupid, and it’s muscle memory.

And it’s one thing to hurt himself with his slips: it’s another entirely to hurt them. 

Again.


	11. stitches

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: idk, poor self-care? lol

It’s a skirmish. Barely a fight at all. But whenever there’s a knife (or two) involved, then someone is going to bleed.

Tim examines the long slash on his forearm and hums his disapproval, like his disappointment will convince his blood to reverse course from where it’s dripping down his hand and flow back into his veins unassisted. When that doesn’t work, Jason takes the roll of gauze from the first aid kit on his belt and stretches it out.

“Here,” Jason prompts.

Tim gives him a bemused look. “I can stitch it.”

Jason is just as bemused, if not more so. “And a dressing will stop you bleeding out before then.”

Tim huffs, but holds his arm for Jason to tightly bind over top of his sliced gauntlet. 

“You don’t get A to stitch you up?” Jason asks as starts wrapping. The bandage is already pinking up over the wound, but it’s tight enough to slow the blood loss enough Tim won’t fall off a roof on his way to…wherever he goes at night. Not the Manor. An apartment, probably.

“I can do it,” Tim repeats, nonchalant except for how closely he’s watching Jason work. There’s something in his expression that Jason can’t quite identify. 

“You don’t have to,” he says, equally nonchalant.

“‘Have to’ what?” Now Tim just looks puzzled again.

Jason rolls his eyes. “Have to do it yourself.”

They’re not friends, not anything like that, so it’s not surprising Jason reads a collection of real reactions to that dart across Tim’s face before he says, sardonic, “Are you offering?”

He’s expecting Jason’s ‘fuck, no’, probably followed by him being abandoned alone on the roof with one bad arm. So Jason shrugs and says, “Sure.”

“You,” Tim starts, scowling, and then blinks. “What?”

Instead of letting him argue, Jason shoves himself under Tim’s good arm and seals a hand on his waist, and then rocks the two of them off the edge of the building, grapple securing to the neighbouring building just before his feet leave the roof. Tim makes an amusing cut off noise of surprise, but doesn’t struggle.

“I’ve got a better first aid kit at mine,” Jason explains over the rush of air, and holds Tim when he _does_ struggle at that. “I’ll have you right as rain in no time.”

Really, Tim did just help him solve this case. The least Jason can do is make sure that when Tim slinks off home, his wounds are already cared for.


	12. don't move

“Don’t move.”

The words wake Bruce, but he doesn’t start - he can’t begin to list the number of times regaining consciousness quickly and quietly has saved his life. Instead, one moment he’s sleeping, and the next he’s awake.

He’d know that voice anywhere. His second son, rough and charged as a live wire.

“Jay?” Bruce asks. He’s in his own bed, sleeping off the effects of painkillers he’d taken earlier at Alfred’s urging. His head feels cottony and a little slow, but not so slow as to not realise that that’s Jason perched on the window sill.

“Robin,” Jason says, which is when Bruce registers the smaller, closer presence, a little shadow at the foot of his bed. A shadow with a knife.

“Fear toxin,” Jason supplies tersely. “Stay still.”

He tenses like he’s ready to spring, and Bruce sees how it’ll play out in his mind’s eye: Jason can and will subdue Damian, with the advantage of size and, presumably, not having been dosed with fear toxin, but it’ll end with broken bones on Damian’s part, and at least one stab wound on Jay’s.

He doesn’t want to watch that. Not tonight. He pushes himself up on his elbow, looking to his youngest. “Damian?”

There’s no reply. Damian doesn’t move. Bruce, somewhat tentatively, reaches over and flicks the bedside lamp on, throwing them into the light.

Damian’s hood is up, but the barest sliver of his jaw where it’s visible gleams silver with shed tears. Bruce’s heart wobbles dangerously. “Damian. It’s okay.”

Damian flies at him. Bruce barely has time to tense before they collide.

The tension is over before it starts. The knife hits the carpet beside the bed, and when Damian’s arms wrap around Bruce’s neck, he _clings_.

The hold is suffocating. Desperate. Damian is panting, his hot breath warm on Bruce’s collarbone, and he’s shivering all over.

“It’s okay,” Bruce says, returning the almost-embrace. He cups a hand around the back of Damian’s head when the only reply is a tortured little moan, and makes eye contact with Jason.

“Red,” Jason says, and reaches out the window to where Tim is presumably lurking. His hand, when he pulls it back, is curled around a syringe.

Bruce ignores the ache in his ribs and leg, and swings Damian around as much as he can without dislodging his grip, settling him across his lap. Then Jason is in like lightning, depressing the syringe with unerring aim into the tiny soft spot they leave in their suits on the outside of the thigh for just this scenario.

Bruce is half expecting Damian to explode at that. He’s certainly not expecting the way Damian presses even closer into his chest, whimpering faintly.

“Shh,” he says around the lump in his throat, rocking him like he would a much smaller child. “You’re okay.”

A big hand ghosts over his shoulder, and then Jason is retreating, saying, “Robin’s contained. What, really? You don’t like my vernacular? Fine. Little bird’s in the nest with daddy. Better? Hmph,” as he climbs back out the window. “Timmy! Bled out yet?”

“He barely got me,” comes the grumpy reply.

“Stab wound’s a stab wound. Isn’t that what you’re always telling me?”

“He should have stabbed _you_.”

“He likes me better. And also, I’m not the one who rushed in to comfort him like an idiot ready to be stabbed.” Their voices fade into the distance as they walk away.

Damian’s breathing is calming, just a little. His grip loosens from ‘painfully tight’ to merely ‘tight’. He murmurs, “Father?”

“I’m here,” Bruce tells him, and doesn’t let go.


End file.
